Silver, and the system he led, go to trial

NEW YORK — The first poster was a bird's-eye picture of the state Assembly chamber, which Sheldon Silver's attorney explained needed to have a leader for “all these seats.” Then he switched to an exterior shot of the State Capitol, which he marked in blue and red to explain the benevolent magic of state government, balancing opinions and interests to “make things work for New York.”

The Democratic assemblyman sat with typical stoicism as his attorney, Steven Molo, offered his introductory civics lesson for the 10 women and six men who will weigh the seven counts of extortion, money laundering and honest services fraud against Silver. The former speaker has maintained his innocence and said he was looking forward to this day.

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On this mild autumn Tuesday, the man who led the state Assembly for more than two decades wrapped himself in the system of Albany. What prosecutors cast as misdeeds — collecting referral fees from a real estate law firm employed by major developers and a firm that represented asbestos patients treated by a medical researcher that Silver gave state funding — were presented as the inevitable conflicts of a part-time Legislature where lawmakers have side jobs.

“New York has adopted a citizen Legislature model. They not only live under these laws, they work under these laws … and this allows more points of view to be heard,” Molo said. “That may make you uncomfortable, but that is the system New York has chosen, and that is not a crime.”

It's a system where campaign money flows, where powerful interests hire connected lobbyists to ensure their needs are whispered into the right ears. Where the speaker can prevent a vote on legislation that has the support of the majority of the chamber's elected representatives. It's a system where Silver doled out earmarks based on seniority and loyalty to consolidate his own grip on power. Where he traded a reduction in pension benefits for the ability to draw legislative districts and authorized the state's first charter schools in exchange for a pay raise.

It's a fitting quirk that the trial opened on Election Day which, for most New Yorkers, came and went with a yawn. The only people on the ballot in Silver's Lower East Side neighborhood were seven candidates for seven judicial positions, all Democrats, picked last month in a judicial nominating convention Silver has cast a shadow on for years.

Lawyers seeking to trade their suits for robes make their case quietly to party apparatchiks and machers. At the convention, the delegates (or in some cases, essentially dispatched by local clubs) create a slate balanced by everything from gender to geography, race to rabbi, before presenting a list for voters to approve.

Silver has spent years as a delegate, according to Alan Flacks, an activist and gadfly from Morningside Heights. This year, the assemblyman sat it out.

“Silver, by the power he amassed as speaker and all the power he has — he's gotten people jobs in the courthouse — also had sway at the judicial conventions because the delegates from his Assembly district and sometimes adjoining districts was able to dictate, on occasion, who would be a judge,” Flacks said. “This year, it was anathema to be connected with Shelly Silver and he knew that if he supported anyone, it might be the kiss of death. So he stayed out of it.”

It's just one of the myriad inside games of state politics that former governor David Paterson, the political scion and longtime legislator, summed up so beautifully in 2010. Planet Albany, he said, is a place where “deadlines aren’t met … there is no gravity and light bends around the Capitol every time the sun shines.”

On Tuesday, Bharara sat on the aisle seat of the courtroom's back pew, silently listening as Molo questioned his motives in bringing charges simply because the current rules of conduct don't “rise to the level that the prosecutors want.” When Molo likened the opening statement by Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Cohen to a “press conference,” Bharara dropped the hand that had shrouded his mouth to reveal a taught scowl.

Cohen's 40-minute overview made refrains of the phrases “bribes and kickbacks” and “secrets and lies” as she sketched the case against Silver.

“This is a case about a powerful politician who betrayed those he was supposed to serve in order to line his own pockets,” she said, returning to the $4 million in total payments Silver collected. “This is not politics as usual.”

The political class in Albany is fixated on the trial, with many wondering privately whether Silver, who is described as smart and shrewd by friend and foe alike, will get nailed. The same lobbyists, lawmakers and lackeys sighed with relief last year when former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno was cleared of charges he traded official favors for a $20,000-a-month consulting gig in which he produced no tangible work.

In that case, the key witness, Jared Abbruzzese, a telecomm executive who put Bruno on retainer, denied to jurors he had any clear quid pro quo with Bruno. In Silver's case, prosecutors have flipped Charles Dorego, an executive at a key real estate firm whose political connections (and donations) run through the entire Capitol. Some experts expect the case will turn on the testimony of Dr. Robert Taub, the Columbia University researcher whose research Silver quietly funded.

And it will depend in large measure on how the jurors come to view the sphinx-like power broker sitting, as is his wont, so unassumingly before them. He left his apartment Tuesday morning an hour before arriving at the courthouse in Foley Square, wearing a wide-patterned blue suit and black fedora and expressing surprise at the presence of a reporter.

There was no car waiting at the corner of Grand and Lewis streets, where the constant din of traffic floats down from the Williamsburg Bridge and the occasional rumble of a passing train was dampened by the leaves on the maple trees that had just begun to turn.

He turned south, walking away from the elementary school where he was supposed to vote without casting a ballot in an election whose results were already determined by the system.